Two, maybe three minutes ago, I thought I was still alive but now that I’ve read Newboy’s words, I understand just how late I am. My vision blurs as I look at what he has to say. A feeling of dissolution overwhelms me as I shift my gaze to the books scattered across the desk. Somewhere in these pages is an answer, an explanation, for what has happened but when I reach for it, my hands sink right through the words as if they were dust. It doesn’t matter - I know now what’s coming. The best I can do in the time that’s left, is to try to tell everything that needs to be told about how and where I went wrong.
    The nature of the mistake is hidden here in these dead words. They speak of some small slip, a momentary loss of focus, something I missed but which was noticed and no doubt commented upon somewhere, by someone. A gap opened and something moved in to fill the space. Maybe if I had more time I’d find it, but like Newboy says, I guess I’m already way too late.

                                                          •

Janine had left a message on the answering machine overnight. Just a quick hello to say she’d be back in Krebbling soon and was I missing her at all? I thought about that as I poured a mug of fresh coffee, trying to work out how long she’d been away. Two months? Longer. The truth was, since I’d started writing again I hadn’t given much thought to anything other than work. I replayed the message and was disappointed to discover the machine hadn’t logged the time she called. Somehow, it made it harder to picture her making the call.
    I retrieved my mail and browsed through it while nursing my coffee and the bowl of dry cereal I ate every morning for the good of my health. I tore the shrink-wrap cover from the magazine and began to skim through its pages. Slipstream didn’t call itself a science fiction or horror magazine, but a ‘journal of speculative fiction’. As if to confirm the literary pretensions there were no spaceships or monsters on the cover, but a bleak landscape with some kind of organic machine. No doubt surreal. But what the hell, it paid seven cents a word for fiction and after four years of silence, I wasn’t going to argue.
    My story, ‘Saint of Pain,’ was the third one in. Nice accompanying graphic, vaguely Kurt Schwitters but darker, a collage that hinted at the tone of menace I’d tried to achieve. As I read the opening paragraph I was aware of something out of place. I glanced at the  byline which ran vertically down the left-hand side of the page in a shadow font, making it difficult to read. I turned the magazine sideways and felt cold, sharp needles pricking my flesh.
    I flipped to the end of the story and found the short biographical note. It was as I’d written it, except the man it described was called Cole Trenton, a name I’d never heard. My mouth felt full of sand and a vein throbbed in my temple, pulsing out a rhythm of doubt. I shut my eyes but Trenton’s name was still there when I looked again a few moments later, proud author of the story I’d written as Ernest Newboy.
    I hadn’t told anyone, I realised, not even Janine. As far as she or anyone else knew, I was still Les Steiner, a writer of fantasy and science fiction with two collections of short stories and three novels under his belt who, four years back, had stumbled into a block. What a shame, people said, for a guy with so much promise to be afflicted with such a crippling silence. Except, as is the way of these things, that was only part of the story. For while Les Steiner remained unresolved about the kind of writer he wanted to be - the very thing which had caused the well of words to run dry - I’d created Ernest Newboy to provide a mouthpiece for the fictions of which Steiner - the attitudinizing prick - was still ashamed.
    In less than a year the infant but worldly-wise Newboy had produced nearly a dozen stories and had begun working on a novel, a daunting project, but one for which he felt ready. Steiner, on the other hand, was still plagued by doubt, unable to see merit in anything he’d written. He believed himself capable of literary excellence, but he wasn’t going to achieve it with works like Ghost dance or City of Dreams. Yet he was pragmatic enough to see that although brooding silence might have been a fitting occupation for a man with literary aspirations, it didn’t put food - not even dry cereal - on the table. Which was why it had been necessary to create Newboy. He had no literary aspirations whatever, other than to get the story written and published. Science fiction, horror, fantasy, erotica - it made no difference so long as they sold. And they had, ten of them so far, and now this was the first Newboy tale to see print.
    Or it would have been, except for this impostor Trenton. I sipped my coffee but it was bitter and cold, offering no insight into Trenton’s intent. I considered my options but they were limited. If Steiner had written ‘Saint of Pain’ that might have meant something but Newboy was a nobody and that, for the time being at least, suited my purpose.
    Using Newboy’s account I fired off an email to Slipstream’s editor, pointing out the attribution error and requesting payment which had been promised on publication. I wanted to do something more, but Steiner deemed it enough. A greater fuss meant risking exposure, and I wasn’t ready for that.

                                                          •

Two days later, Weird Tales arrived. It had been ten years since I’d first appeared in it’s pages, and I could still recall the excitement I’d felt, despite the fact it was no longer esteemed as highly as it had once been. It had history and to be part of that, to see my name where Lovecraft, Bloch, Leiber and Bradbury’s had once appeared was a real kick. But that was in the past and as I began flicking through the magazine, I no longer knew for sure what I felt.
    Until I saw Trenton’s name where Newboy’s should have been, and recognised the cold dread gusting through my heart. It didn’t seem possible but the taste of blood on my lips told me it was. I wiped my mouth and read the biog at the end of the story. It was more or less the same, though the tone was subtly different, as if a gap had opened up between the writer it spoke of and the one I’d invented.
    Angry and bewildered, I wanted to lash out but I resisted the impulse. Janine hadn’t returned to Krebbling yet and I’d cut myself off from other friends. I tried to think through the implications of my bizarre predicament. It would be difficult for Steiner to claim the story as his own, given his prolonged silence and the care I’d taken to eradicate any connection between him and Newboy. Which meant Newboy would have to speak up for himself and claim authorship of the story. Except that, to all intent and purpose, he was a complete unknown while this was Trenton’s second story to see print. It occurred to me that he might already have sold other stories, which would put him even further ahead. Caution still seemed the best option, so in the end, I did what I had done last time, sent an email informing the editor of the error and requesting a correct attribution of the story in the next issue.
    But the weakness of Newboy’s response left me disinclined to work on my novel. I decided to take a break, figuring that a couple of days off hardly constituted a block, not for Ernest. I drove over to Janine’s place on Main Street. The intercom remained stubbornly unanswered, so I left a note in her mailbox asking her to call as soon as she got back to town. I drove up into the mountains, hoping to recapture some of the old fascination with nature that had first brought me to the Colorado high country five years ago. Two hours into a twelve mile hike, my enthusiasm was fading and by the end of it, I was sick to death of rocks and trees, of the cold, thin air and the fingers of cloud that scratched at the bloodless sky. I ate dinner at Neddy’s Bar & Grill, a twelve ounce steak washed down with a few beers. I returned to my apartment a little before ten and saw the light flashing on the answering machine.
    I hit playback and felt a warm thrill of anticipation when I recognised Janine’s voice. “Hey honey,” she said, then hesitated. “I’m sorry,” she went on, faltering. “ I - I guess I must have the wrong number.”
    My eyes began to hurt and something hard and solid began to expand inside my skull. I grabbed the phone and punched in her number. After a few seconds, Janine’s answer machine clicked in. “This is me you’re not speaking to,” she said. Her voice sounded distracted, far away. "Which means if you want to speak to me, I guess you’ll leave a number so we can make it happen.” Then a beep and a silence waiting for me to fill.
    “Janine,” I said. “You had the right number. Call me.”

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Trenton’s life began to diverge from my own. This much was clear when I read the note accompanying the fifth of Newboy’s stories to see print. Whoever he was, it was no longer enough for him simply to pass my work off as his own; now the fucker was trying to plagiarise my life. It was too much. He left me no choice but to fight back and the first thing to do was to find out who he really was.
    Except it wasn’t that easy. I couldn’t find a single mention of Trenton on the internet, despite the fact that he had five published stories to his name. So maybe he was a front, but that still left someone behind him, some no-talent fuck willing to go to any lengths to make a name he didn’t deserve. Newboy was the ideal target - a man without material existence, blessed with genuine literary skills but unable to speak for himself. That he could get access to Newboy’s stories, suggested the impostor was known to me. Perhaps he worked for one of the magazines, an editor maybe, or a reader. Someone connected with the industry, maybe even a fan.
    Whatever he was, I was on to the weasel fuck. I wrote to every editor, agent and publisher in my contact list, alerting them to Trenton’s scam. Rather, Newboy did this - it was his livelihood that was threatened after all - but I was behind him all the way. He mentioned the stories that had been ripped off and asked that they be alert to any future attempts at plagiarism.
    A week later the new Interzone arrived. I smiled as I noted the absence of Trenton’s byline on the first page of ‘The Far Away Room’. But the smile slackened as I saw the name that had taken Newboy’s place. “Nicholas Sporlender.” It sounded like a dying prayer on my lips.
    I called my agent. It had been a while since we’d spoken, nearly three years. I guess Racoona ran out of patience waiting for me to start writing again. I didn’t blame her. I mean, why bother putting yourself out for a fifteen per cent cut of  nothing? I hadn’t told her about the Newboy thing - somehow, I didn’t think she’d have approved. “I’m sorry,” she said, when she came on the line. “Who is this?”
    “It’s Les, Les Steiner. I know it’s been a while, but we need to talk.”
    “Right - you’re the writer with a great future behind you.”
    “Okay, I’m sorry. I should have returned your calls.”
    “What do you want, Les? I’m real busy.”
    “I’m working on a novel.” I hoped I didn’t sound too desperate.
    A moment’s silence, then, “You have something for me to look at?”
    “Yes, but I need your help with something else first.”
    I heard the sigh. “This better be good.”
    I told her about Newboy, his stories, and what had happened to them. I’ll say this for Racoona, you never had to repeat things. Once was always enough for her to grasp the intricacies and implications of a situation before offering her considered judgement. “Forget it,” she said.
    “Forget it?”
    “What do you want from me? It’s a crying shame what happened to you, Les, just when things were starting to happen. But this is not the answer. Short stories are an indulgence, a luxury you can’t afford. If you still had the profile you had four years ago, then I could have sold them. But you come to me now, when nobody remembers who you are, when your profile is, like, non-existent.”
     “I’m not asking you to sell them.”
    “But better than that,” she continued. “Just on the off chance there were some readers out there who remembered your name, who might have been interested to read this new stuff, you come up with this pseudonym, which drags you down to the same level as every other wannabe trying to make a rep for themselves. But somehow you manage to sell these stories without going through me, only for some other unknown to steal the credit for them. Like I said, Les, forget it.”
    “I can’t believe what you’re saying.”
    “You said something about a novel,” she said, dismissing Newboy. “That’s a start. Send me a few chapters, a synopsis and I’ll see what I make of it. A novel I can do something with, but please, no more pseudonyms. Newboy is nobody. Whatever you are now, Les Steiner was somebody once. We have that much at least, to work with.”     
    I spent the rest of the day brooding on what she’d said. The thought of giving up on my stories, of letting Trenton and Sporlender get away with it, was galling. But deep down, I knew she was right. It was a battle neither I nor Newboy could win. The important thing was that I’d rediscovered my voice and with it, an audience. That had been the intention all along, to take the pressure off Steiner by letting Newboy take the rap if the stories failed. In a way, it was only right that the wrong guy should have the credit, even if it wasn’t my wrong guy.
    So, when the remaining Newboy stories were published as by Leonie Hargrave, John Luther Novak, James Sheldon Jr. and Alex Blade, I bit the bullet and decided that the time had come to lay my alter ego to rest. Nothing else mattered but the novel; nothing else could contain everything I had to say.

                                                          •

I tried hard to put everything behind me. I gave myself up to Becoming - the title I’d decided upon - hoping that, in time, Newboy and his problems would just fade away. I established a routine over the next few weeks, writing twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day. Janine called a few times, but I never managed to catch her. I wanted to talk to her, let her know what was happening, but to do so would have meant disrupting the routine. And I was in the zone by then, focused entirely on my characters, living and breathing their world, intent on resolving the turmoils and contradictions of their lives. Better to get it finished before trying to patch things up with her. After a month or so, I didn’t notice if she was leaving any new messages.
    When the first three chapters were done I mailed them to Tiptree Associates along with a synopsis. They sent back a form letter acknowledging receipt of the manuscript which would, they said, “be read with interest.” Racoona’s idea of a joke. I didn’t care because I knew that once she started reading, it would blow her away. Becoming was like nothing I’d written before. It was the book I’d been working towards all my life, the novel that would establish Steiner’s literary credentials beyond the insular, ghetto world of genre fiction. I emailed Racoona, telling her I saw the novel as a new beginning. Les Steiner was no more and the publication of Becoming would signal the arrival of K. Leslie Steiner on the scene.     
    It progressed quickly and I sent the chapters to Racoona as and when they were finished. The agency emailed to confirm the safe arrival of the first eight or nine, and then, a prolonged silence. I wasn’t bothered, not then. It was Racoona’s way. She liked to take her time getting to know a work. It had been like that with my previous novels. So I tried not to get ahead of myself, to not get too excited. It was inevitable, I thought, that she would come through in the end.

                                                          •

It was done inside eight months, the last chapters mailed off and only the waiting to come. I tried calling Janine, wanting to tell her all that had happened in the last year, see if we could get back to the way we had been, before everything. Her number had been disconnected. I drove round to her building, managed to get to see the Super, only to have him tell me Janine had never come back. He’d relet the apartment six months ago when she’d failed to renew her lease.
    I went to Neddy’s that night and got drunk, hoping it would ease the pain. Next morning it was still there. I went out and bought a bottle of J&B, drank it, and repeated the process every day for a week. It took that long to realise that booze wasn’t going to fill the space she’d left behind. All right, I told myself, she’s gone, but was she ever yours to begin with? More likely she was part of Les’s life. Better to let her stay there. Besides, it meant I could catch up on all kinds of things I had missed. A year’s worth of movies and books. Getting my body back into shape. Maybe a visit to New York, touch base with some old acquaintances. It took a while to settle into any kind of pattern, but all the time I was thinking about the next book. Ideas were fermenting, things were starting to take shape.
    But no word came from Racoona. Two months after I’d mailed the final chapters I called her on the phone. She wasn’t available. If I left my name, some supercilious prick said, no doubt she’d get back to me.
    I sat in front of my computer, staring at the blank screen. I needed a boost, some acknowledgement of worth, that what I had done meant something. I logged onto the net and typed my name into a search engine. Google came back with a whole load of nothing connected to me. I dug the heels of my palms into my eyes and tried to grind some clarity into them. I heard the walls creak and noticed a thick layer of dust on the windowpane, obscuring my view of the outside world. The grain on the bookshelves seemed to have lost its uniformity, its flow interrupted by ugly, discoloured knots that protruded from the timber surface. I found an online database of SF writers, entered my name and pressed ‘find’. No hits for Steiner, not even for variations on the name.           

     Panicked, I tried different parameters, entering the title of my first novel, City of Dreams. The author came up as Sonny Powell. Time slowed until it seemed I was caught in a fugue. I watched my fingers type in the words Ghost Dance and wondered how Lee Falconer could have written the same book. Fred Ewing, the author of my third novel, Eye Teeth, was as unfamiliar to me as Trenton or Sporlender had once been. Which was almost a comfort.
    I shut down the computer, wishing I could do the same to my head. There were too many strange and contradictory thoughts crowded in there, all chipping away at my sense of self. I had to get out of the building, find someone to talk to, anyone, as long as they could confirm my existence. I walked the couple of blocks to what passed for downtown. I stopped at a drugstore and bought a Snickers just to see if the woman behind the counter would take my money. She did. The guy I deliberately bumped into on the pavement acknowledged my apology with an untroubled “forget it”, while the barman at Neddy’s put a J&B in front of me just as requested. He followed it with a couple more which told me things maybe weren’t so bad after all.
    I left the bar and strolled across the street. Krebbling in Spring was a town in transition. The skiers had fled with the snow, and the Summer hikers, nature lovers, mountain bikers and the rest, had still to arrive. The panic had left me and in the unhurried calm of downtown, I found myself in front of The Creeping Vine, an independent bookstore specialising in SF. Janine had organised signing sessions there to promote my last two books. Maybe they carried my back catalogue. Inside, a skinny guy with a goatee sat at the counter reading a comic book. I pretended to browse, but in truth I searched for my own work. There were none I could see.
    I approached the counter and asked the guy if he had anything by Les Steiner.
    He raised his head from the comic book, glanced at me and then tapped the keyboard in front of him. After a couple of moments he shook his head. “We gotta negative on that one, Cap’n.”
    I wanted to hit him. Instead, I asked him if he had a copy of Eye Teeth.
    “Lemme see,” he said, tapping the keyboard again “Yep, I think so.”
     “Can I see it?”
    He nodded, came out from behind the counter and searched among a rack of shelves at the rear of the shop.  When he returned, he handed me a hardcover book with the title Eye Teeth emblazoned in a jagged white font across the cover, Fred Ewing’s name in the same font beneath. I swallowed hard, tried to keep my voice calm. “I changed my mind,” I said. “How about a collection called No Eyes With Which to Speak?”
    He shrugged, checked the computer again and wandered off to find it. “This is a signed copy,” he said, returning from the rear of the shop. “First edition.”
    I grabbed it without looking at the cover and flipped it open to the title page. Things seemed normal, date and place of publication, title of book, copyright details for each of the stories, name of publisher. Everything present and correct except that Cordwainer Bird had scrawled his signature beneath his own printed name.    
    I don’t know what hour of the day or night I returned to the apartment, but when I got inside and turned on the lights, I slumped into an armchair and laughed. I was drunk, sure, but it wasn’t the booze that had made me anticipate changes: a loathsome stench of doubt hanging in the air, things not where they should be, a small drop in temperature, a muted quality to the light. But everything was as it should be. Nothing was altered, all the detritus of my life in its right and proper place.
    I tried to work out what time it was in New York, found the task beyond me, but called Tiptree Associates anyway. A machine answered and I declined to acknowledge it. Still jittery, I went into the study and stood in front of the bookshelves that lined one wall. I pulled the limited edition hardcover of Ghost Dance from its place and read Lee Falconer’s name below the title. Inside, she’d written To Ernest, I’ll save the last dance for you. Best Wishes, Lee Falconer.
    All the books I’d written had been signed to Newboy. I felt weak and my eyes hurt bad enough to bleed. I sat down at the desk, breathing deeply, telling myself that it was okay, this was still my home. No matter what it said on the covers, I was the man who’d written these books, breathed life into their protagonists, determined the course of their events. I looked down at the book on my lap, saw the words that Sonny Powell had written there. Once Upon a Time, All this was Yours. It had been mine, he was telling me, but no longer.

                                                          •

The morning was leeched of colour, the street outside and the mountains beyond, as grey and stillborn as the sky. My head was clogged with dull anger and ruined speculations as to the origins of my predicament. I made coffee, drank three mugs to clear the fuzz and still couldn’t think straight for more than a minute or two. Something had to have caused all this. It had to be there in my past, a minor detail just waiting to be recognised as the thing that had tripped me up.
    In my study I confirmed what I’d seen last night, that I’d written none of my own books. I booted up the computer and opened the last email I’d received from Tiptree Associates, intending to force Racoona’s hand on Becoming.  As I was about to hit the reply button I noticed that it had been addressed to Newboy. The room was still, no sounds leaked in from the street. The world might have been empty. Nothing made sense anymore. Racoona had insisted that I drop the pseudonym. Why the change of mind? Unless she had some other plan, like wanting to keep my real identity hidden until we were close to publication, then create a splash with a big PR campaign for K. Leslie Steiner’s debut. It was feasible but I needed further confirmation.
    I dug out the original letter from Tiptree Associates acknowledging receipt of the opening chapters of Becoming. Like the email, it was addressed to Newboy. But what really fucked me up was that the novel it mentioned was Unbecoming.
    Later, when I could bring myself to move, to speak, I rang the agency and demanded to speak to Racoona. The guy I spoke to before said she no longer worked for Tiptree Associates, that she’d branched out on her own. I asked him who was responsible for my novel. The fucker put me on hold for two minutes listening to some godawful muzak version of The Beatles. “I’m sorry sir,” he said when he came back . “We have no record of receiving any manuscript from you.”
    “I’ve got a fucking letter here acknowledging receipt,” I said.
    “Maybe you should take it up with Ms. James.”
    “Why don’t you give me her number.”
    “Why don’t you look it up,” he said, before cutting me off.
    I found a James Literary Agency on the web and called the listed number. The receptionist wanted to know the nature of my business and didn’t respond well to my suggestion as to what she should do with herself. After three attempts to speak to Racoona, I emailed her withdrawing Becoming and terminating any agreement we might have had. I’d find a new agent or, if worse came to worst, I’d market it myself. I knew people, after all, I still had contacts. That left one final thing. I went through all the files on my hard drive and trashed everything Newboy had produced. I realised finally, that I should never have gone down that road. When it was done, I felt a weight lifted from my mind. Now I could go back to my own life, let people know who I really was.

                                                          •  

I couldn’t seem to get started on anything. I read back through all the notes, the synopses, the character descriptions I’d made for the follow up to Becoming, but the more I tried to get into the mindset of my protagonist, the emptier, the more hollowed out I felt. Half a dozen times I made a tentative start, getting a page or two written only to read through it with a growing sense of despair. The delete key took a hammering.
    By the third day I could barely bring myself to sit in front of the computer without feeling that it was conspiring against me. The email from the James Literary Agency was just another sign. They had no record of receiving a manuscript called Becoming, from a Les Steiner or anyone else, and therefore couldn’t return what they didn’t have. Maybe there was some logical explanation but I couldn’t escape the idea that Racoona had screwed me. If I lodged a copy of the manuscript with an attorney and sent the agency another copy, then they’d have to accept that I was its author. How else could it be in my possession before it was published?  But it wasn’t there. A thorough search of the hard drive revealed no trace of its existence. I turned the apartment upside down, sure I had printed a hard copy besides the one I’d mailed to Racoona. I didn’t find it.
    I checked the computer again, then searched frantically through my files, looking for notes I’d made, anything that would disprove the awful suspicion that was beginning to take hold. The notion that I hadn’t written it after all. That in desperation one of us, Newboy or myself, had merely imagined writing it, that in truth, Becoming had never really been.

                                                          •

Perhaps it would have been better for me if I had left it at that, if I hadn’t discovered what I now know. It might have been yesterday, I can’t be sure, but at any rate not long since I saw the way things really are. Or do I say that simply because time seems to have stopped and all experiences start and end at this precise moment? I can’t figure it. I was walking down Main, near where Janine used to live, maybe trying to flesh out the picture of her I still carried in my head. The image was corrupted, like a bad digital transmission, flickering and frozen into incoherence. Maybe I thought that if I could make her whole, then I could do the same to myself.

     Passing Borders, something about the shopfront display caught my eye. I leaned forward and squinted through the glass. It shimmered and threw back fragments of my own face. I barely recognised myself. Inside the store, I found the display and stared at the exploding, Futurist inspired image on the dustjacket of Ernest Newboy’s Unbecoming. I picked up a copy, flipped it open to the last page and read there my final words of fiction.
    These last few days I have reread each of my books, looking for clues. Of course I accept that they are no longer my fictions, but even so, given time, I believe I could have discovered their secret truths. But the work expands and the words consume me. Trenton and the others have been joined by Waldo Hunter, Wade Kaempfert, Charles Satterfield, Caleb Saunders, Laurence O’Donnell, Anson McDonald and Cassandra Knye. They feed off my words like they were their own. But I can’t say that. I can’t say much of anything now that I’ve read what he has to say.
     It’s right here in front of me, a website I stumbled across while searching - in vain, until now - for some mention of who I was. I never thought it would be him, even though I’ve followed his career from a distance. But here it is, in Omniscient City, the confirmation. In an attack on writers who seek to escape their science fiction or horror roots, Ernest Newboy cites “the late K. Leslie Steiner” as a typical example. I wish I could say otherwise but the truth is I no longer have it in me to argue with that.

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'Unbecoming' was first published under the pseudonym Willard Grant, in Fusing Horizons #4, in Autumn 2004. In 2006, it was the title story of my first collection, published by Elastic Press. The story is dedicated to pseudonymous writers working everywhere. As Ernest Newboy might have said, "Know that we are among you."